Just a query on bushfire animal deaths

[Exfso (Peter)]

I heard the cricket commentators talking of numbers of animals that have died in the region of 500million. are they serious?? these blokes are doing a great job raising money for those that have been impacted by this disaster, but that is a helluva lot of animals. Not sure where they got their information from, but surely this is way overstated.

[skysurfer]

500 million animals on 5 million hectares burned forest means 100 animals per hectare, one each square 10x10 meters. Appears not much, but is is still half a billion too many. It affects the ecosystem of New Scorched Wales and Victoria for years.

[multiweb (Marc)]

They had a map of all the cattle and sheep in SE NSW & VIC and that's a lot not counting wild life. I guess the tally at the end when things clear up won't be pretty but I have no idea about the numbers.

[LewisM]

Peter, number is no exaggeration. It is into the BILLIONS when you take into account snakes, lizards, insects...total imbalance of micro, mini and macro ecosystems.

Wife and I have been helping transport animal food, water and vet supplies donated here in Canberra from the collection points to the storage sheds. It's a small part, but the least we could do. Our kids have been drawing on the pouches for the orphaned babies.

Hundreds of people worldwide have been making these pouches for baby roos, possums, koalas, and bats - from Asia, Russia, USA, Europe. Making bird boxes to go into trees and on poles if there are no trees left.

Many are DOING something - however small - rather than complaining about their own health from the smoke. Our neighbours have been scrounging the golf course bins for bottles and cans and donating this money directly to the RFS - around $25 a day just from one golf course.

[The_bluester (Paul)]

I don’t particularly doubt that as an estimate, it is probably conservative. What does not get a lot of public attention is that the insect life will have been decimated as well.

That cuts off the bottom of the food chain for everything small reptiles and upwards. As an example, 6 years ago before our place was burned (February will be six years) we had a pretty healthy population of bird life, including very small birds like blue wrens. Loads of possums etc, regular sightings of blue tongue lizards, echidnas etc. We have seen very few possums since, there are a couple now but nothing like the population we used to have, things like echidnas and blue tongue lizards are very rare sightings still, the grass parrots and rosellas have really only just started to show up in any numbers in the last year or so but we have not see a blue wren around the place since the fires. Most were probably killed directly by the fire but the rest would have moved on for lack of food and have not yet returned.

And ours was a relatively light, relatively cool grassfire, nothing at all like Black Saturday or the fires of this year.

[JA]

The 500million figure would seem to stem from a University of NSW figure from Prof. Chris Dickman and was for animals "affected" rather than those necessarily killed, although the immediate prospects (food, water, shelter, degree of injury,etc..) of all of the affected animals would likely be bleak.

The figure includes mammals (~18 per hectare), birds (~21 per hectare) and reptiles (~130 per hectare) with the densities based on a 2007 study/paper and also based on when the fire area was 3 Million hectares (now 5 Million hectares). If extrapolated to the current 5 million hectare bushfire area the figure would be over 800 million animals.

Here is a related link....
https://www.bbc.com/news/50986293

Best
JA

[DeWynter (ILYA)]

Originally Posted by LewisM

It is into the BILLIONS when you take into account snakes, lizards, insects...

Not insects in that particular case. But it does include snakes, lizards, birds etc.

[julianh72 (Julian)]

Whatever the number killed to date (and we'll never really know), it's pretty certain that many, many more will day in the coming weeks and months from starvation and exposure, as their food sources will take months or years to recover, as will their protective habitat. It's quite likely that there will be several species driven to extinction, as several critically endangered species have had a very significant fraction of their known habitat completely burnt out.

'Silent death': Australia's bushfires push countless species to extinction
https://www.theguardian.com/environm...ies-extinction

[gary]

Though not victims of the fire, there were also the reports in October
and November of the bodies of thousands of migratory mutton birds
washing up on beaches in NSW including Bondi, Manly & Cronulla, as
well as out on Lord Howe Island and the coasts of Tasmania and Western
Australia.

The birds apparently migrate from Japan, Siberia and Alaska to breeding
grounds south of Tasmania and are normally punctual.

Observers were first surprised back in October when their arrivals were
weeks late and the numbers 30% to 40% down. Then the bodies started
to wash ashore.

A similar event had occurred in Alaska in September raising concerns
and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated the deaths may have
been in the hundreds of thousands.

Back here, a number of dead birds from different sites were submitted for necropsy.
All have showed similar results, including muscle wasting, emaciation
and evidence of starvation. Some infectious diseases including avian
influenza and Newcastle disease have been excluded by PCR in the
events in Qld, NSW, Vic, Tas and WA. Infection with West Nile Virus
was also excluded by PCR in birds from NSW.

So with the birds having appeared to have starved to death, one concern
is that with rising ocean temperatures, much of the krill upon which
the birds largely depend on to survive has gone to deeper depths
which they now cannot reach.

ABC 5 Oct 2019
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-...chers/11572220

Audubon 11 Oct 2019
https://www.audubon.org/news/thousan...res-again-year

ABC 25 Oct 2019
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-...sland/11627720

Sydney Morning Herald 30 Oct 2019
https://www.smh.com.au/environment/c...030-2wgzd.html

The Australian 20 Nov 2019
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sci...54b81d1003a7aa

msn.com 18 Nov 2019
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/austr...sis/ar-BBWUMAm

11 Dec 2019 Australian Wildlife Health Network
https://www.wildlifehealthaustralia....20Website).pdf

[Wavytone]

Having just returned from Lord Howe Is. it was indeed grim compared to 39 years ago when I was there before. Fish numbers are way, way down and likewise bird numbers.

Insect numbers have also plummeted - an important food source for birds. Whether it’s farming, insecticides used in urban areas I have no idea but without them many birds cannot survive.

So far this summer I haven’t seen a cockroach, no Christmas beetles at all, and rarely seen a fly. Even mozzies are not the problem they were 30 years ago (I used to be covered in bites constantly). No cicadas either (but they have a 7 year cycle).

There’s a catastrophe coming imho and it’s not far off. I’m oLd enought to gave read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and the significance is not lost.

[LewisM]

Originally Posted by Wavytone

Having just returned from Lord Howe Is. it was indeed grim compared to 39 years ago when I was there before. Fish numbers are way, way down and likewise bird numbers.

Insect numbers have also plummeted - an important food source for birds. Whether it’s farming, insecticides used in urban areas I have no idea but without them many birds cannot survive.

So far this summer I haven’t seen a cockroach, no Christmas beetles at all, and rarely seen a fly. Even mozzies are not the problem they were 30 years ago (I used to be covered in bites constantly). No cicadas either (but they have a 7 year cycle).

There’s a catastrophe coming imho and it’s not far off. I’m oLd enought to gave read Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and the significance is not lost.

Come to Canberra - tonnes of cicada shells (they just molted), plenty of Christmas Beetles to clean up too. Flies? I'll ship you a penta-billion (probably not a real number).

Only thing I haven't seen in numbers this year is snakes. I'm not crying in my coffee.

[Peter Ward]

The numbers are likely conservative. I suspect this is an extinction level event for some fauna.

Apart from that tragedy, there will be a significant economic price, far beyond rebuilding and repair of homes/infrastructure lost, due the loss of farmlands and stock. I expect some foods will become very expensive.

We need to (collectively) change for the better, as successive repeats of such events are clearly not sustainable.

[gary]

Originally Posted by Craig Butt and Justin McManus, Sydney Morning Herald 7 Jan 2020

Following the fires that have torn through the region, bird carcasses – perhaps in their thousands – have washed up on Mallacoota's once-pristine beaches.

Mr Semmens, 87, has counted 100 dead birds from 25 species on a half-kilometre stretch of Tip Beach, just outside Mallacoota, half-buried in blackened piles of leaves. “It’s a sorry sight,” he said.

Story, pictures here :-
https://www.smh.com.au/national/vict...07-p53plm.html

[Ukastronomer (Jeremy)]

It really annoys me here in the UK, we hear nothing of the animal loss over there but I am pleased that the heroic actions of the fire services and volunteers are reported daily here

[Nikolas (Nik)]

Originally Posted by Wavytone

So far this summer I haven’t seen a cockroach, no Christmas beetles at all, and rarely seen a fly. Even mozzies are not the problem they were 30 years ago (I used to be covered in bites constantly). No cicadas either (but they have a 7 year cycle).

We've had heaps of Christmas beetles and flies this year. Mozzies will come out more as the weather turns more humid, sae with the cockroaches, IT has been a while since Ive heard a cicada however in Melbourne.

[Kal (Andrew)]

Those numbers seem conservative to me.


Recent studies for example say that feral cats in Australia kill 377 million birds each year alone, thats over a million birds a day.

[gary]

Liam Mannix reports yesterday in the Sydney Morning Herald on revised
estimates by scientists from Australian universities and the Australian
Museum.

Originally Posted by Liam Mannix, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 Jan 2020

On Wednesday, Professor Chris Dickman, from the University of Sydney, raised his projected animal death toll for NSW alone from 480 million to 800 million.

His original projection – which has been widely quoted on social media – is based on a 2007 report he and two other leading scientists wrote for the World Wide Fund for Nature on the impacts of land clearing in NSW.

Drawing on surveys published by other scientists, they estimated a rough number of animals –mammals, birds and reptiles – per hectare for coastal NSW.

Professor Dickman then took that number and multiplied it by the number of hectares burnt to give an estimated death toll.

Originally Posted by Liam Mannix, Sydney Morning Herald, 8 Jan 2020

Dr Chris Reid, the Australian Museum’s top insect scientist, estimated the number of insects lost at more than 240 billion, although he said there was little published data to base that on.

Article here :-
https://www.smh.com.au/national/many...08-p53pvk.html

[Wavytone]

In that case expect a lot of hungry birds in suburbia. And I'm sure the toll on them is nearly as bad percentage-wise.

[Exfso (Peter)]

Apparently the WWF say it could be over 2.5billion, that is one very sad statistic.

[gary]

Peter Hannam writes last night in the Sydney Morning Herald :-

Originally Posted by Peter Hannam, SMH, 10 Jan 2020

The ecological devastation of the Victorian bushfires has been laid bare in a leaked report which warns some species are likely to already be extinct – even as authorities brace for many more weeks of fires.

"Almost all" eastern ground parrots' Victorian habitat has already been destroyed, according to a draft report on the bushfire emergency delivered to government earlier this week.
It says more than 40 per cent of the Victorian habitats of the sooty owl, diamond python, long-footed potoroo, long-nosed bandicoot and brush-tailed rock-wallaby have already been wiped out.

An estimated 25 per cent of the sooty owl population has been killed.

The East Gippsland galaxias, a native Australian fish, has had 100 per cent of its potential habitat burnt, while more than 70 per cent of the Gippsland water dragon's habitat has been incinerated.

Originally Posted by Peter Hannam, SMH, 10 Jan 2020

It warned that 31 per cent of the state's rainforests had already gone up in flames, as well as 24 per cent of wet or damp forests, and 34 per cent of lowland forests.

Of 104 parks managed by Parks Victoria, 34 were entirely burnt out including the Alfred National Park in Cann River and the Lind National Park between Cann River and Orbost.

Leading conservation biologist Professor David Lindenmayersaid it would take more than 100 years for wet and damp forests to recover from the ferocity of this season's fires.

Of more concern was the increasing severity and regularity of fire seasons, with many of the areas that have already burnt or which are predicted to burn in 2020 being ravaged as recently as 2014.

Originally Posted by Peter Hannam, SMH, 10 Jan 2020

The report warns the government to expect "high mortalities" of koalas in and around Mallacoota, and says some species of frogs – including alpine tree frogs, green and golden bell frogs — have lost 70 per cent of their habitats. The giant burrowing frog has lost 40 per cent of its habitat.

More than 25 per cent of the state's greater glider population has been lost. Most populations of lace monitors are at risk.

Story here :-
https://www.smh.com.au/national/vict...10-p53qep.html